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“It’s a very frightening concept as a parent that your son now becomes a martyr, a public figure for the world. He’s just our son.”
— JUDY SHEPARD |
WHILE PROSECUTORS have asked them not to discuss the upcoming trial of the suspected murderers, the Shepards have courageously agreed to share some very private and painful thoughts about the tragic loss of their son. “It’s a very frightening concept as a parent that your son now becomes a martyr, a public figure for the world,” Judy Shepard says. “He’s just our son.” Four months ago Saturday, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming was lured to a rural road, tied to a fence, and beaten into unconciousness. The immediate symbolism was plain, and while the analogy to Christ on the cross was an obvious one, it was also simplistic. Matthew Shepard may have become a symbol for gay rights, but to his parents, the truth was more complex. “He was just a young man in search of his place in the world, and by no means a saint,” says his mother, Judy Shepard. His “place in the world” might seem more traveled than most. He spent his childhood in Wyoming, then went overseas as a teenager when his father got a job in the oil industry there. But to hear Dennis and Judy Shepard describe their son’s life is to hear a story that is oddly familiar — an everyman’s tale of insecurity and the struggle for acceptance. But in Matt’s case, the struggle was harder than most. Dennis Shepard: “I called him ‘The Bad Karma Kid.’ Because if you were sitting right here, and I was sitting right here and a piano was coming down on top of my head, for some reason the wind would blow and it would land on him.” Katie Couric: “He would take the blow so you didn’t have to.” Judy Shepard: “Yes.” Dennis Shepard: “Yeah. It seemed like he took the blow on a lot of things like that.” The many ironies of Matt Shepard’s star-crossed life are not lost on his parents — beginning with his physically small stature. When he died, he was little more than 5’2”, and 105 pounds. Katie Couric: “He was always sort of a scrappy little kid wasn’t he? A bit of a fighter?” Judy Shepard: “Things would frequently go wrong for him. And he was ill a lot as a child. But he always came back fighting. Always, always tried.” Dennis Shepard: “See, everybody else grew up bigger than he was. He had braces when he was 13. Well, when he died he still had his braces on. Everything seemed to take longer for him.” While he didn’t excel at sports, he liked camping and fishing, and his parents say that from an early age, Matt was drawn to theater. One of his first performances was that of a martyred president — Abraham Lincoln — in a 5th grade play. Katie Couric: “A sensitive child?” Judy Shepard: “Very sensitive and intuitive. He would know when things weren’t right.” His idealism fueled an early passion for politics and causes —- like a fundraiser for Yellowstone Park. Judy Shepard: “He liked talking politics and current events with adults. He couldn’t do it with his peers because they didn’t watch the news. But for some reason Matt was fascinated with that.” Katie Couric: “What did he want to be ultimately do you think? Or what did he want to do?” Dennis Shepard: “He wanted to go into diplomacy work overseas with human rights.” In 1993, the Shepards had left Wyoming for Saudia Arabia. Matt finished high school in Switzerland. It was during a senior trip to Morocco that this “Bad Kharma Kid” had a shattering experience that would color the rest of his life. Dennis Shepard: “When he left the hotel, he was waiting for the other kids to come down. He was so excited. He just walked down the street to see some other kids. And, it cost him.” Judy Shepard: “He was robbed. And, (sighs), he was raped. And, (pause) (sighs), that incident changed us all — forever.” To this day, his parents say they still don’t know the details, but Matt soon began treatment for depression. And though he moved on with his life, they say he never stopped blaming himself for what happened. Katie Couric: “He was, in many ways, very naive, wasn’t he?” Judy Shepard: “Yes.” Dennis Shepard: “Oh. Innocent.” Judy Shepard: “He was very mature and responsible in some ways. And in others, he was really, really immature and naive. He just never wanted to see the bad in anything.” It was only after the trauma of the rape that Matthew Shepard found the courage to tell his parents and younger brother, Logan, something they say they had already figured out — that he was gay. Dennis Shepard: “I think it was hard for him initially, to say, ‘Dad, I’m sorry, but…’” Judy Shepard: “We didn’t want to force the issue with him. We felt if he wasn’t ready to tell us, then he wasn’t ready to talk about it. He was our son. We would have accepted and loved him and supported him no matter the decision he’d made.” Katie Couric: “Having said that, was it a bit hard to accept at all?” Dennis Shepard: “You want to see your son or your daughter have grandchildren. So that the family tree continues. It was hard to accept the fact that it stops here.” Judy Shepard: “What you had planned for your children — you know you’re not going to experience that. But by the same token, it’s not your life he’s living. It’s his life. And our reaction was one of real fear. We feared for his safety.” There was reason for concern. There was an incident last summer while the family was on a vacation to Yellowstone. Matt propositioned a bartender and was on the losing end of the subsequent scuffle. “Matt was taking medication for depression and was drinking, something he shouldn’t have been doing,” Judy Shepard says. “And he doesn’t remember anything that happened that night.” But by most accounts, Matt did not flaunt his sexuality. While he joined the campus gay group after arriving at the University of Wyoming, Laramie isn’t the kind of town that lends itself to a gay lifestyle; being gay there means keeping a low profile. But his parents fears were realized just a little more than a month after Matt had started school... Judy and Dennis were asleep in their home in Saudi Arabia. “When you get a long distance call over there there’s a ping that comes on the phone,” Judy Shepard says. “And whenever we heard that ping it was, ‘Oh gosh, I hope Matt’s okay.’ Well, he wasn’t.” About 10 o’clock the night before, Matt had left campus for a beer at The Fireside, a local bar. Not long after, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson wandered in. Neither was from the university; both were high school dropouts from a poor part of town. They ordered a pitcher of beer from bartender Matt Galloway. “They paid for it with nickels and dimes,” Galloway remembers. “They dug into their pockets and put the change out on the bar.” What happened next isn’t clear. Police say the two men pretended to be gay to win Matt Shepard’s confidence. Their motive may have been robbery. Or it may have been something more. McKinney would allegedly tell his girlfriend that Matt made a pass at them, and that they wanted to teach him a lesson. Bartender Matt Galloway saw nothing unusual. “Nothing seemed wrong, nothing seemed new,” Galloway said. “Nothing seemed to be a fight starting or someone starting something with another person. Nothing like that.” Whatever the reason, police say the two lured Matt outside, driving off in the 30-degree weather in McKinney’s father’s truck. Eighteen hours later, Matt would be spotted tied to that fence on the outskirts of town. |
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| Matthew Shepard was tied to this fence, beaten into a coma from which he never recovered. | 
Aaron Kreifels, another university student, was out mountain biking when he saw Shepard. “Halloween was coming up, so I thought it was just a Halloween gag,” Kreifels says. “I was probably 15 feet from him… He was breathing very heavily through his nose. His breathing was sounding terrible.” Matt Shepard was barely recognizable. Limp and lashed to the fence, he had been beaten an estimated 18 times with the butt of a handgun. His skull was crushed, his face cut repeatedly and covered in blood, except for one cheek, where his tears had washed it clean. Dennis Shepard: “And you think, what hell did he go through?” Judy Shepard: “And the fear he must have felt. And that ride. And being left. Tied to that fence… The image of him tied to that fence is... when I close my eyes, that’s what I would see. But it was… it was replaced by the hospital.” By the time the Shepards arrived in Wyoming, the word was out and it seemed the entire nation was thinking — and talking — about their son. “Now our private lives were public and it just didn’t seem fair to us to have to share this horrible moment with the world,” Judy Shepard says. Katie Couric: “When you got to the hospital, did you see your son?” Judy Shepard: “Well, we saw a shell. His head was wrapped in bandages and, uh, cuts all over his face. And his nose. His face was swollen.” “When you walk into the room like that and you see somebody so lively, your knees buckle. Because he’s just there,” says Dennis Shepard. “And you’re just hoping that he can hear you because he can’t react to anything. So you stroke his hand, and his chest. You think there’s hope. You just... know there’s hope. He will come... come around.” But he didn’t come around. For five days he lingered. In the meantime, police had arrested McKinney and Henderson when they were picked up after fighting two Latino men. In McKinney’s truck, police found a 357-caliber Magnum covered in blood, along with Matt Shepard’s credit card and his size 7 shoes. Matt’s wallet was found in Mckinney’s garbage. Back at the hospital, just as his family was debating taking him off life support, Matthew Shepard died. Katie Couric: “You know it’s one thing to lose a son. But the brutality of this crime… How do you deal with that?” Dennis Shepard: “It’s real hard (pauses)…” Judy Shepard: “The anger really isn’t there yet. I’m sure it’ll come. But it’s not really there yet. It’s just that I don’t understand how anybody could do that. It’s just beyond comprehension. I was talking to a friend of mine in Saudi Arabia. And um. (pause) he said, ‘What about forgiveness?’ I said not the way I grew up. ‘How can you forgive something like that? Would you forgive somebody who did something like that to your daughter?’ And he was real quiet. And he thought about it — ‘I don’t think I could.’” It was a level of brutality no one could understand. And as the Shepards prepared to bury their son, they began to realize the impact Matt’s death had had on the country. But along with the outpouring of concern came a pouring out of hatred; Matt’s funeral became the focus of protests. Katie Couric: “When you saw pictures of those people carrying those signs...” Judy Shepard: “It’s their ignorance coming out. I feel sorry for them that they are so consumed by such a hate. It must color their whole life.” | |||||||||||
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Dennis Shepard: “They looked really silly out there. We were burying a son. We were not burying a murder victim. We were not burying, uh, a gay young man. We were burying our son. And they looked really asinine.” And despite — or perhaps because of — the outpouring of emotion, the Shepards say they have yet to grieve themselves. “I’m afraid that if I go through the grieving process I’ll not be able to go to the trials,” says Judy Shepard, “And be strong for Matt.” The first of the murder trials — Russell Henderson’s — is scheduled to begin next month. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Judy Shepard will be there as the mother of a murdered son. She doesn’t want groups on either side to use Matt to advance their own political agendas. And she worries that somehow, he’ll be blamed for what happened that terrible night. As for the men who will be on trial, she says she feels nothing. “They’ve done something horrible to my life,” Shepard says. “To my son. To my family. And I don’t want to waste any of my feelings... on them. I’m saving it all for Matt.” Ironically, just this week, Wyoming defeated two bills that would have increased penalties for hate crimes in that state. Meanwhile, the two men accused of Matthew Shepard’s murder have entered separate not guilty pleas. As the Shepards prepare to face a pair of difficult trials, they hope something positive can come from this tragedy. They are establishing a foundation in their son’s name. To contact the Shepards for more information on the Matthew Shepard Foundation, you can E-mail the Shepards at: matthewshepard@wyoming.com |
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  Gay & Lesbian National Hotline |
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